As the technological capacity for organizations to create, track, and retain information continues to grow, a variety of different technologies for managing and storing the rising tide of information have been developed. Database systems, for example, provide clients with many different specialized or customized configurations of hardware and software to manage stored information. The increasing amount of data that organizations must store and manage often correspondingly increases both the size and complexity of data storage and management technologies, like database systems, which in turn escalate the cost of maintaining the information. New technologies seek to reduce both the complexity and storage requirements of maintaining data by introducing different data formats that offer different processing or maintenance capabilities. However, introducing multiple data formats is not without cost. Data is often processed by different systems which may not support the current data format of the data. Thus, the techniques to extract, transform, and load data between different formats or locations are applied. As a result, data may evolve in content, schema, format, or location over time. Techniques that can track the evolution of data and take responsive action to the evolutions may be desirable.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.
It will also be understood that, although the terms first, second, etc. may be used herein to describe various elements, these elements should not be limited by these terms. These terms are only used to distinguish one element from another. For example, a first contact could be termed a second contact, and, similarly, a second contact could be termed a first contact, without departing from the scope of the present invention. The first contact and the second contact are both contacts, but they are not the same contact.